


See The Thorn

by queensmooting



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 14:38:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15317661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensmooting/pseuds/queensmooting
Summary: It’s not the first time Paige has considered a ticket to Moscow.





	See The Thorn

**Author's Note:**

> oops i've had this in my google docs for a month now guess i should post it eh
> 
> anyway i miss my show :(

“Anne, wait!”

Paige turns to her coworker, jogging to catch up. “Hey, Sara.”

“Didn’t want to let you leave without saying congrats." Sara grins. “A Livingston Award is a big deal, y’know.”

“Thanks." Paige fidgets with her hair. “I'm just a finalist though, and I had a lot of help--”

“Humble as always, Annie.” Sara’s smile falls, becomes more serious. “You know your article meant a lot to me. Long-term effects of losing your parents so young? Made me remember what it was like after my folks’ accident, the way people acted around me at school, like I had the plague…” She laughs quietly. “Well, I’m glad you wrote what you did. Reminding everyone we’re not cursed.”

Something guilty stirs in Paige’s stomach. “Right.”

“You...I don’t remember if you told me…?”

“My dad died in Vietnam before I was born. Mom from cancer when I was nine. Then I was raised by my Aunt Helen.”

The lie doesn’t roll off Paige’s tongue as easily as it usually would. She feels like a fraud in the face of Sara’s real grief. 

“Damn,” Sara says. “Sorry to bring this up on Mother’s Day weekend of all times.”

Paige swallows heavily. She had forgotten.

Sara claps her on the shoulder. “Hey, enough of this sad shit. Wanna grab a drink? Celebrate?”

“Sure,” Paige says. “Just let me hit the bathroom first.”

Memories hit her in hard waves like they haven’t in years. The Mother’s Day she carried a plate of breakfast to her parents’ room only to find Elizabeth wasn’t home. The Father’s Day when Philip took her to an Orioles game, the matching jerseys they wore. The apartment. The darkroom. The train.

In the restroom Paige splashes cold water on her face. The air thickens and closes around her and it’s all she can do to breathe. She wonders what Elizabeth feels every Mother’s Day.

She wonders if time had found a wound it couldn’t heal.

*

It’s not the first time Paige has considered a ticket to Moscow. Even at thirty-four fleeting whims finds her here and there.

When the Berlin Wall fell and Americans cheered in their own streets and Paige kept to herself, the grief and awe on her parents' disguised faces still too fresh.

When the Union dissolved, and she wondered what would become of the two of them.

When she published her first article in the Seattle Times and she celebrated with an empty apartment and a vodka martini.

When the Capitals won the conference championship and she wondered if her father had a hockey channel. If he had a TV at all. 

When she got the stomach flu and her heart couldn’t help yearning for a mother to hold her hair, rub her back, tell her all the right foods to eat. Tell her everything would be alright.

For years the thoughts remained fleeting. She’s spent nearly half her life alone now, working mostly from home as a writer. New name, new coast, far under any radar.

Paige sits at her desk surrounded by haphazard notes on an upcoming feature article and an empty food container that smells of dill and garlic. She can feel her life etching itself into a rut. Her paranoia and evasive tendencies have kept most coworkers and relationships at equal bay. And it's been fifteen years this Christmas. Fifteen years.

She never regretted her choice, not for a minute. But still she wonders.

*

She returned to the East Coast once, only once. In a permed blonde wig and horn-rimmed glasses she flew to New York and drove a rental car nearly three hundred miles to New Hampshire. She couldn’t risk flying any closer, certain the FBI were still keeping Henry under careful watch.

Paige sat bundled in the stands of Dartmouth’s hockey arena, watching the team take to the ice. Her breath caught at the sight of Henry. It’d been nearly five years and he’d grown taller, his face longer, his smile confident under the lights.

He looked proud, happy. Her little brother.

Watching him took her back, years and years, to reading books on the lawn as her father taught Henry how to play hockey in the driveway. She could smell the grass tickling her arms, hear the click of sticks on the pavement, their father’s encouraging cheers.

“Look out, Henry,” she muttered, wincing as he nearly avoided being crushed against the glass.

“Are you his sister?”

She looked up at the middle-aged woman sitting beside her, wrapped in a Dartmouth blanket. “What?”

“Henry." The woman smiled, examining Paige’s face. “You have the same eyes, I thought maybe…”

Paige laughed, trying to control her mounting nerves. “No, no. He’s an old friend from--high school.”

“Ah. Well, Henry’s a great kid. He’s roommates with my son Sammy. Number 15,” she added, pointing at the ice.

Paige wondered how well this woman knew Henry. If he ever sat at her Thanksgiving table, in lieu of having a real family to go home to. If he ever mentioned having a sister at all.

“I still can’t believe Henry’s not entering the draft,” the woman said.

“The NHL draft?” Paige asked. _ He's not? Is he alright? Tell me everything. _ “He didn’t tell me that.”

“Darndest thing. He could be a first round pick but he says he’s done playing. Heaven knows why, not even Sammy can get an answer out of him. He’s always been private from what I can tell, couldn’t tell you a thing about his life outside of hockey, but--dear, are you alright?”

Paige wiped at her eyes. It’d been too long since she last talked about her brother. For five years all she could see was the dirt crumbling over his passport. “Allergies.”

She breathed deep, focusing on the ice. The game remained scoreless until the end of the second period, when Henry squeaked in a goal four seconds before the buzzer.

“Yeah, Henry!” Paige cheered, caught up in the moment.

As the audience rose to their feet, clapping and whooping, Paige noticed two heads turn in the front row. Her stomach dropped as she instantly recognized Stan Beeman, with Renee beside him.

For half a second he locked eyes with her. She forced herself to look away as her heart raced, her gut churned. Had he recognized her voice? 

When she chanced a second look Stan had turned away, his shoulders stiff. Paige sat frozen, eyes glued to his back. He didn’t budge, even as Renee leaned close to tell him something. He didn’t budge as the period ended and the crowd rose in a rush to concessions.

Was Stan letting her go once again?

Paige slipped out before the third period. On her way out she bought a Dartmouth jersey, in cash. No one followed her.

*

It takes months before Stan procures the address as a favor to Henry. Henry forwards the address to Paige to make her stop calling.

He won’t go with her. She never needed to ask. She lost the right to call him family the day she chose to leave him.

For years she thought he’d come around. Paige remembers the months of breathless anger when her parents first told her the truth, and she at least got to hear it from them. Henry never had that luxury. So she gave him space. Waited. Waited years. 

Waited as he changed his name and graduated college and held a wedding she wasn't invited to. The birth announcement of her niece was the last piece of mail she received from him, and something about being a husband and father must have raised his defenses. He changed his number, then changed it again when she found him. She got the message. For the second time in her life she let her brother go.

She wonders what Philip and Elizabeth would be like as grandparents.

Fifteen years, and she can't stop wondering about them. So she packs her bags.

*

After all these years there's a curl of panic in her stomach every time an airport security agent checks her passport, glances at her face, matches the photo to the name Anne Charles. It took months training herself to respond to the name, years more before Anne seemed to fit her better than Paige. She used to wonder how long it took her mother to turn her head at the sound of Elizabeth.

Even with security measures heavily increased since last year, she's at the gate in less than an hour. Paige remembers the lengths it took to get to Russia fifteen years ago and marvels at how fast the world changes. Already it makes her feel old. Already it's like she's lived ten lives in one, with little room for any more.

*

After a layover in London Paige boards a second plane. She's seated next to a Russian toddler and his father, who apologizes profusely for his son's noise. The boy waves and gurgles and peeks shyly at Paige. She doesn't mind at all.

Her first plane ride was a trip to Florida when she was five years old, her brother barely walking. Their parents took them to Busch Gardens and it took Paige decades to realize they must have been there on sort of mission for the agency. Elizabeth was absent for a whole day of their trip. Philip blamed heatstroke.

Paige remembers swaying on her father's shoulders under the humid Florida sun, her small fingers curled in his hair as she screeched with delight at every animal. She remembers the soft, tired smile on her mother's face when they got to the hotel room that night, how she planted a slobbery kiss on her cheek and whispered  _ Feel better, mommy _ .

“What brings you to Moscow?” the man asks, his voice warm and kind.

“I’m seeing my--parents.”

It’s a strange thing to finally admit they exist, out loud. For a years she claimed orphanage. Now it’s like she can almost feel them again, like they're sitting on the end of her bed.

The man smiles, rubbing his son’s back soothingly. “You are a good daughter.”

Paige smiles back, tight-lipped. She doesn’t have the heart to correct him.

“Quite a far journey, yes? You visit for Christmas?”

“Yes,” Paige says. “It’s been too long. I had to know--”

To know they were happy, or at least alive. To know all three of them made the right choice. Paige always wondered if a day would come when her curiosity--her love--outweighed her guilt. She supposes fifteen was the magic number.

She watches the toddler drift to sleep on his father's shoulder and remembers a time she felt that safe. That loved.

*

When Stan searched the Russian databases he only found Philip's name attached to the address.

It could mean nothing. It could mean Elizabeth didn't have a job, or that she was working under the table. Somehow Paige couldn't picture her mother sitting around tending house. 

It could mean her parents weren't living together anymore. It seemed most likely. Their marriage had been so businesslike Paige sometimes wondered how she never saw it before they told her. Toward the end they were hardly speaking, only the barest threads of duty holding them together. Perhaps Elizabeth had found another man, another country, another life.

Or. It could mean she was dead.

Paige remembers the night she found her mother kneeling over a body in the park, brain and bone dripping from her hair, none of the blood on her face her own. Elizabeth seemed invincible then, a force of will and power Paige could never hope to be. At that moment she knew she wasn’t cut out for the work. 

Elizabeth could be dead and really, it shouldn’t have made a difference. Paige had gone fifteen years without a mother. What more was the rest of her life?

She watches the blurry greens and browns and blues of Europe pass under the clouds from her window. It shouldn’t have made a difference, but it was hard to picture a world without Elizabeth Jennings.

*

A Capitals post-game show played quietly on the TV screen and its flicker in the dark room made Paige’s eyes itchy. Under her head her father’s shoulder rose and fell, steady with sleep. Henry snored on the other side of the couch, his sippy cup leaking slowly on the rug.

Paige snuggled closer, resting her ear over her father’s heart.

She didn’t realize she fell asleep until a blanket draped over her legs. Paige blinked and saw her mother smoothing the blanket, then switching off the TV.

“You’re home,” Paige mumbled, rubbing her eyes.

“Shh.”

Her mother put a finger to her lips, then knelt to pick up Henry. She sighed heavily before straightening up again.

“Are you tired Mommy?” Paige whispered.

“I’ll be alright.”

Her mother stood there for a moment, eyes closed, Henry a heavy burden in her arms. There were lines on her face Paige never noticed before, suddenly clear in a slice of streetlight cutting through the window.

“I should go to work for you tomorrow,” Paige said. “So you can sleep.”

“You want to do my job?”

“Yeah.” Paige stifled a giggle, careful not to jostle her father. “Then I can be the boss. I’ll be just like you.”

There was something strange in her mother’s smile, something oddly proud. She hugged Henry a little closer and kissed the top of his sleeping head.

“Well. Maybe when you grow up.”

*

Paige steps into the bathroom of the airport bus station and grips the sink, palms slippery on the porcelain. A muffled intercom announces arriving buses in her parents' language, the language she was just starting to learn back when everything went to hell.

She sucks a harsh breath through her nose and looks in the scratched mirror. Her once-vibrant red hair had darkened to a warm auburn over the years. Round wire-rim glasses hide her eyes now. Her cheeks have thinned, her forehead slightly lined.

Would her father recognize her? Would her mother, who looked on her face before anyone else in the world?

Paige thinks if she were a parent she would recognize her child without sight or sound, armed with nothing but gut instinct and a pull in her heart. But she was never very good at being a daughter. What could she possibly know about being a mother?

Her bag leans against her leg, heavy and persistent. Somewhere in the city are her parents, her father at least.

Perhaps she should have called ahead, to see if she was still wanted at all.

*

Moscow is a city she's helpless to navigate on her own, overshadowed by buildings she’s never seen, surrounded by an alphabet she can barely read.

And yet.  If her parents had taken a different assignment she would have been born here.

Christmas bells chime from an Orthodox cathedral across the street. Paige lifts her eyes to the golden dome, tightening her hood against a swirl of snow. She hasn’t stepped foot in a church since she was a teenager and she won’t today but she stands and listens, leaning against the iron gate. Her eyes close. The bell chorus warms her blood against the frigid wind.

Her childhood Christmases were strict in their traditions and frugal in gifts. Paige remembers her mother taking them to the mall for Santa pictures only once, and she remembers the way Elizabeth eyed the other parents’ shopping carts full of toys. Paige and Henry received two gifts each at Christmas, one from each of their parents, nothing more.

She never loved the holiday any less for it. Even as a child she looked forward to the chance to have both her parents home for a few days at a time. She liked the way her father relaxed, how the sad, faraway look in his eyes went away at the sight of Paige’s over-frosted cookies. Even her mother laughed when Paige and Henry insisted on singing every carol they knew in an off-key two-part harmony.

The bells come to a resonating stop, ringing through the busy street until the sound fades into the morning air, drifting away with the snow.

Paige pulls a list of directions out of her coat pocket, already crumpled by anxious hands.

*

In West Berlin Paige sat on her stiff hotel bed, eyes on the door where she watched her grandmother's caretaker wheel her away. Elizabeth sat at the window, tightly gripping the curtain.

“I don’t get how she could let you leave like that,” Paige said. She wanted to be strong like her mother and grandmother but her voice wavered. “Basically say goodbye forever. Would you let me do that?”

Elizabeth finally turned. Her eyes were wide, concerned, motherly in a way Paige still needed. She’d never felt closer to Elizabeth, yet she couldn’t comprehend the life her mother chose to lead.

“No,” Elizabeth said quickly. She rose and sat beside Paige, the bed dipping. “You would never have to do anything like that, okay?”

Elizabeth brushed back a strand of Paige’s hair, her eyes never leaving Paige’s. She’d never felt closer to Elizabeth, and somehow never farther away. After a life built on lies it was hard to believe anything her mother said. It was harder still not to take comfort from her words, false or otherwise.

“We’ll always be together,” Elizabeth said. “I promise.”

*

Her father's apartment building is one of several high-rises surrounding a wide green space with a playground. A bass-heavy track thumps from one of the ground levels and children chase each other on the playground equipment, screeching, bundled up like colorful marshmallows.

Paige sits on a bench at the playground for two hours, willing nerve to find her as she watches the front door of the apartment complex.

She can hardly believe she’s here, that  _ he’s  _ here, that her mother could be here too. Even now she thinks there must be some mistake, that Stan got the address wrong. The bitter Moscow air is too real in her lungs, and for too long her parents have stayed foggy figures at the corner of her mind, forever sliding out of view from train windows.

The door opens and a man walks out, carrying a trash bag. His hair is nearly all gone but for a few curly black tufts. When the white winter light hits his face he looks around sixty years old. Paige puts a hand over her mouth, stifling all noise.

He wears glasses now. Like hers.

He throws the bag in a dumpster in the alley beside the building. Then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat, shivering. He turns to the playground, lined eyes watching two children on a seesaw. He smiles slightly. His eyes are less faraway now, less sad. Paige rubs stubbornly at her own watering eyes, not wanting to miss a moment.

A woman walks out the same door a minute later, thick threads of silver braided into the golden brown hair tied over one shoulder. She comes up behind the man and places a hand on his back, asking him a question Paige can’t hear. The man murmurs a response, smiling over his shoulder. The woman takes the man’s glasses and uses a corner of her sweater to wipe fog away from the lenses. As she gives them back the man brushes snowflakes from her hair. Their eyes are impossibly soft.

She's never seen these people before.

_ Mikhail _ , Paige thinks.  _ Nadezhda _ .

Her father tries to lead her mother in a sort of dance to the music coming from the other building, making her mother grin and shake her head. They lean close to each other, hands entwined. Then they start talking, and from this far Paige can barely pick up the tones of their voices. She tries to remember the last words her parents spoke to her and finds she simply can’t. She should have paid more attention that day, cataloged every detail.

Paige may not know much about being a parent, but she knows she broke their hearts the day she stepped off the train. Somehow they managed to find happiness not because of her absence, but in spite of it. It’s everything she could have wanted for them.

Her mother laughs, loud and clear through the playground noise, and Paige stands with a lighter heart.

She returns to the main road, leaving behind nothing but footprints in the snow.

*

Nadezhda peeks over her husband's shoulder at the playground. Something grips her heart at the sight of a boy and a girl playing on the seesaw, clearly siblings. She presses her nose against Mikhail's coat. 

Paige and Henry had always gotten along well, even for siblings. She supposed it was the time spent alone together, left to fend for themselves more often than not. It tightened their bond, strengthened their independence. Nadezhda could hardly feel guilty for that.

_ Henry, Paige... _

_ Paige-- _

Nadezhda gasps, breaking away from Mikhail. A red-headed woman walks away from the playground and something about her posture, the way she walks, her steps shy and slow but her head high and proud--

"Look," she says quietly, digging her fingers into his arm. He turns and follows her line of sight but the woman is already turning the corner. She's gone.

"What is it?" he asks.

Nadezhda breathes hard, head dizzy. It was only because she had been thinking of Paige, that was why she thought she saw her. She had to be rational.

Mikhail looks at the street, the playground. He looks at her face and his own softens.

"Every Christmas," he says. "Every Christmas I think about it."

The phone call. The passport burial. The train. Nadezhda nods, ready to move past the fleeting thought.

“Should we…” Mikhail trails off, avoiding her eyes. “America, we’ve talked about it for years...”

Over time Arkady Ivanovich has remained a friend, using government influence to keep them updated on their children, their new identities. They know Paige has been living in Seattle under the name Anne Charles, and they have every article she's written in their filing cabinet. They know she's won some award and they wish they could see it on their shelf. They know Henry still lives in New Hampshire, though they have no plans to ever make contact with him. If he’s managed to heal the scar they left on him, they won’t be the ones to reopen it.

“No,” Nadezhda says. “She’ll come to us. When she’s ready.”

Mikhail looks like he wants to protest. She knows the look well. After a moment he nods.

“When she’s ready,” he agrees.

They take a last look at the playground, where Nadezhda stills finds herself searching for a brush of red hair. It’s a while before they follow each other back to the warmth in their home.


End file.
